A Blog for All and None

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Month: May 2013

Another blog entry written for its own sake. Is this a pattern? Do I finally have enough accumulation of extra thoughts to fill a spontaneous blog post each week? If so, it would be a good indicator of my general stability. But I fear I will simply be staring at the wall and typing what I see.

No matter. A Rorschach Test it is then. The only real question is whether I publish what I write or hide it. If I did hide it, I would have to think it was bad, but also that I have good reason to hide something bad from you. But I don’t really have a good reason to hide something bad. I’m at my wit’s end in life. To keep something hidden would require incentive, but what for? I’m not hiding anything. Maybe I’d be better off if I did have something to hide, but I don’t.

As far as my slow progress on my videogame (or whatever it is), it seems like I could do better if could produce little isolated chunks and only later try to integrate them. Not that I’m really that productive. In fact, I’d rather listen to the Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album than actually write anything or program anything.

I realize with some dismay that I take more pleasure in my lack of taking pleasure in anything than I do in anything else. In other words, I feel rather depressed, thinking that I am totally out of place here on earth. But the fact that I am depressed is actually a source of joy. I think that some part of me remains proud of not enjoying my time here. Maybe that’s enough enjoyment to hold me over. The dismay I mentioned is a matter of wondering if it wouldn’t be better to actually enjoy something besides not enjoying very much. Maybe I do enjoy things, but they have been subsumed by a kind of pride which decided it was more important than they are.

Is the pride good or bad? I feel like it’s good. It not only makes me feel special, but it symbolizes the civilizing of baser instincts. I also think I must be deceiving myself. There must be things I really do enjoy, but they are so far from currently occurring that my psyche is trying to detach from them, causing the depression, lack of enjoyment, and subsequent enjoyment of the lack of enjoyment. I really don’t know which side to choose. Should I promote the original things which for some reason I can’t get, or promote the proud enjoyment of the lack of enjoyment?

And it’s weird, because there are so many things I’m not saying. I feel a lot like the Oasis song Wonderwall. I may be pulling away from honesty in general, realizing that there’s no way to say certain things. It’s been well known since primitive times that saying certain things, such as the names of the dead, for example, could be a curse. Consider that one of my natural talents is for description. Therefore, I’ve developed a bias toward solving all my problems by describing them. I may fear falling back on a world where I can’t describe things, but I also realize describing them is reaching the point of diminishing returns, if not outright becoming harmful.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve once again entered into psychological territory in which I’m alone in the desert. But I’ve been there before. I don’t want to be in the desert anymore. I hope this is one of the last times I have to do this.

A lot of the most difficult emotions are the ones which can hardly be civilized. If a person wants total control over the world, how can they express that in the world we have? Or if they want to have sex with whomever they want at any time, what are they supposed to do? People divide into two camps, those who subdue their instincts and those who express them, despite the consequences. I guess I have to subdue them, even though it removes the joy from my life. That’s what the “good guy” is supposed to do.

I wish the devil on my shoulder could formulate an argument my conscience could accept. Instead that devil just flounders around with ways of expressing itself which I can’t integrate into the rest of me. I’m not saying the angel on my other shoulder is any more pleasant than my devil. But at least the angel isn’t f’ing retarded. The devil will say something like, “Rape that woman!” I’m like, “No. Right or wrong, do I really want to risk going to jail!?” I’m getting to the point where I’m actually rooting for him, hoping he comes up with something which isn’t just outright retarded. No wonder I’m depressed. My devil’s f’ing retarded.

I’m going to write a blog entry. I suspect it will be one of those entries written for the sake of writing an entry. In truth I was so impressed with myself on the Freud series that I wanted it to be the one people saw when they came here. But time will weather even something good. And a blog is no place for eternal things. Well, maybe, who knows, the internet is still mysterious. For example, will it still be possible to watch a Justin Bieber video exactly one century from now?

Likewise, what does my decidedly less popular blog mean? If there’s a way to make money from this thing, I haven’t found it yet.

I’ve been working on my videogame. Or at least what has become of my videogame. I’ve accepted that there is a need to start simple. I wonder if there is an artistic space which in telling you would spill so much information that it would contaminate my abililty to do the work itself. I guess that’s okay. I need to do whatever it takes to get it done.

So what is this blog for then? Well, no matter what happens, it can serve as an artifact. Thus every word I type is an artifact. It’s nice to convince myself that some future researcher will be so interested in either the phenomenon of the internet or of “Zach the Mystic” Tollen that this blog will actually be of great interest to them. But that I have to convince myself of that shows that I still haven’t found the meaning of my life. Meaning makes the moment worthwhile, such that the imagination is unnecessary. The imagination is great, so long as it is not too divorced from reality. And I’m lucky enough to have no idea how interested the archaeologist of the future will be in this artifact.

And there’s a certain spark in the idea of keeping something great hidden. For example, novels like the Da Vinci Code are predicated on this theme, and the Indiana Jones movies, directly linking my theme with archaeology, via Hollywood, I guess. But does it really make sense for a person to actively produce artifacts? In other words, I’m creating a time capsule, but why?

I don’t have a good reason. I don’t really have any secret wisdom I couldn’t ideally package in a way which presents itself to the world while I’m still here. I think that’s what my videogame is for.

The way I make the game is to ask myself whether what I’m doing is the kind of thing God wants me to do. Uncertainty would seem implicit here. But I’ve run out of other ideas as to how to procede. All of history’s ideas of what God is and is not enter into the psychological complex to which I address my questions. But of course, if God has no living quality, no immediate presence, then It’s nothing but a practical joke for me and everyone who ever thought to rely on it. But I don’t take it that far. Instead, I need to do whatever works. A strangely humiliating place to be, but not without precedent.

The typical process involves the holy person emptying out everything which is attached to his “small self”, which is called the ego, until enough has been emptied out that God, or some larger self, can move in. Whether it will happen in my case is of course unknown. But I really don’t have anything else going for me.

It seems that a huge part of my task has not been the act of doing the right thing, but of resisting the wrong things, things which are commonly done by people but which I should not do. It’s very weird resisting such things, because they garner social approval, and my social status could not be lower, really, unless I were in prison. I’ve not held a job in ten years, and been on disability (whether I have such disability or not) for the whole time. That’s not to say people don’t like me. But being well-liked and having my own income are two vastly different things which have not crossed paths with each other in my life so far. And I believe it’s supposed to be this way. That God wants it to be this way.

I guess it’s better for me to believe that, even if it turns out to be a delusion. If I’m to fail, let me fail blind and deluded. If I’m to fail, what is there to see? I might as well not even know about it myself.